It’s final. Miami commissioners approve eco-adventure plan, hotel for Jungle Island.

The operators of Jungle Island got the final go-ahead from city commissioners Thursday to build a hotel and a series of recreational features designed to improve the long-struggling attraction’s fortunes by turning it into an “eco-adventure” resort.

The 5-0 vote came after Jungle Island’s owner, ESJ Capital Partners, wired $804,000 in overdue rent to the city, a condition wary commissioners insisted on when they gave an initial OK for the expansion in late January. ESJ blamed the late rent on the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced closure of most of the attraction on publicly owned Watson Island for nearly a year.

“Congratulations, ESJ and Jungle Island,” Miami Commission chair Ken Russell, whose district includes Watson Island, told attraction representatives in attendance at the hearing following the vote.

The approval of a complex lease agreement and a suite of required zoning and land-use changes came more than two and a half years after Miami voters overwhelmingly approved the hotel proposal in a referendum.

Russell and fellow commissioners did insert one last-minute amendment into the agreement with ESJ in response to complaints from residents of a Venetian Islands condo that sits across a narrow channel from Jungle Island on Biscayne Bay. Venetian Causeway home and condo owners previously and successfully pressed for changes to the planned eco-adventure park’s layout to lessen potential impact on residents.

But the one feature that remains open at Jungle Island, the Joia Beach day club, has been drawing boaters who anchor in the channel, block other boat traffic, and blast music, creating a nuisance and a hazard on weekends, residents of the 1000 Venetian condo told commissioners.

“The situation is clearly and visibly out of control,” condo association president Morton Ehrlich said as he shared photos of boaters partying and crowding the channel.

Spencer Crowley, an attorney representing Jungle Island, said the boaters have the right under state law to anchor at that spot unless there is a formal safety exclusion zone approved by the city. He added the attraction’s operators will encourage the boaters to use a designated anchorage nearby.

Russell wanted that commitment made part of the formal agreement, as well as a requirement that park operators work with the city on creating a safety zone. Jungle Island agreed.

The unanimous commission vote also marked the second and final approval for a pair of unusual companion measures that effectively swap park designations between Jungle Island and Hobie Beach on the Rickenbacker Causeway. The measures lift the park zoning for Jungle Island’s garage to allow construction of the hotel atop it, while legally zoning Hobie Beach -- which had no park designation though an oversight -- as parkland.

That swap allows the city to satisfy a policy barring loss of overall park space. But city planners assured commissioner worried about the precedent it might set that the strategy was a one-time workaround that did not involve any loss of real park space and won’t be used again.

The swap cleared the way for the commission to approve complex changes in the zoning and land-use designations for Jungle Island to allow construction of a hotel of up to 300 rooms, a zip-line course, water slides and other adventure features that ESJ hopes will boost lagging attendance and revenue at the park, formerly known as Parrot Jungle.

The package of approvals also includes a Special Area Plan, an often-controversial zoning measure that allows owners of properties over nine acres broad development flexibility in exchange for designated public benefits. In exchange, ESJ is obligated to make about $1.5 million in contributions to city funds for affordable housing and other public benefits.

A handful of Miami residents, testifying by phone because of the pandemic, urged commissioners to approve the eco-resort plan.

Michelle Mandelbaum, a teacher, said she knows of no facility locally offering zip lines and other adventure-style activities her children and students enjoy.

“We don’t really have anything like that here in our area,” she said, adding that she and her family have had to go elsewhere in Florida to find zip lines. “We’ve even gone to Melbourne to do things like that.”